After making several films based on books she authored (PERSONAL VELOCITY, THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE) or on an original screenplay (ANGELA, THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE), filmmaker Rebecca Miller’s latest, MAGGIE’S PLAN, is her first movie based on the unpublished work of an outside author—her friend Karen Rinaldi. Ironically, the work feels like an especially personal story involving the lives and loves of a creative group of friends, acquaintances, and lovers, played by the likes of Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, Julianne Moore, Bill Hader, Maya Rudoph, and Travis Fimmel.
Considering that Miller herself grew up in a home with creative types—her father is author and playwright Arthur Miller; her mother is photographer Inge Morath—it should come as no surprise that MAGGIE’S PLAN (which she adapted) is both an examination of such a household and perhaps even a cautionary tale. Miller was in Chicago recently where I got to sit down with her to discuss the film and the story that inspired it, as well as how her husband (actor Daniel Day Lewis) helped her cast a critical role in the movie. We were joined by the film’s producer, Damon Cardasis, and it was great chat about a more intellectual take on the romantic-comedy genre. Please enjoy my chat with Rebecca Miller and Damon Cardasis…
Capone: I saw this film for the first time at Sundance. I didn’t realize until the second time that nearly everyone in this film is being very manipulative, except for Guy. He’s about the only one who is about as much of a straight shooter as you get in this film, and of course, because of that, he’s not even really considered a possible match for Maggie for about 99 percent of this movie. That being said they all have their hearts in the right places. Is that a tough tone to get right?
Rebecca Miller: Well, yeah. I suppose so. It’s kind of like in the grand tradition of like Molière and French farces. You get a lot of people trying to manipulate other people, but perhaps our people are a little bit more likable. There is that sense that everyone’s doing something for each other’s own good and making a big mess of it half the time. Tonally it’s a challenge to keep it all up in the air, to put enough air in it that it rises above the ground. That is a challenge.
Capone: Also, as audience members, we’re almost constantly changing our minds about who we like more, which pairings we think are the best ones.
RM: I think that’s an important point, because I wanted it to be that you’re changing who you’re rooting for. You’re thinking, “I’m rooting for them to get together. He’s got to leave that wife. She’s so cold and awful.” Then you’re like, “Well actually she’s great. Wait a minute. Maybe they should get back together. Maybe I want them back.” So it’s also about how we judge people. Georgette is called a monster in the first 10 minutes. You judge her, and she fits into a certain cliche of a woman you’re like trained to hate. Then gradually you think, “Wait a minute, she’s kind of great and vulnerable.” By the time she’s dancing to “Dancing in the Dark,” you’re thinking, “Wow, what a great woman.” I think that that’s part of the whole charm of these performances that these actors created. They embody flawed people like the audience, like all of us are flawed people who are still lovable. I think that’s the optimistic part of the movie.
Capone: In other hands Georgette could have been played very badly and very much as a stereotype shrew of a wife. I was fearful of that when we first meet her, but at some point, Julianne Moore gives her those layers we need to really see where she’s coming from and how she and Ethan work so well together. With Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph’s character, we see these couple that appears to be bickering a lot. I know people like that, who seem like that, but at the same time you’re like, “I wish I was like that with my significant other.”
RM: I feel like in a funny way, Bill and Maya have a perfect marriage. By the end of the movie, you realize that they really love each other but they’re really honest with each other about how they drive each other nuts.
Damon Cardasis: It’s complete honesty.
RM: Yeah, it’s complete honesty and that’s a certain type of relationship. Also, likewise with Julianne and Ethan’s characters, you see how, in some ways, they had a really bad year, but they have a great relationship, but with its flaws. There’s no such thing as a long relationship that doesn’t have its flaws and potholes.
Capone: It’s interesting also that Ethan and Greta, they’re the only ones we see fall in love. And as a result, they seem to have the least interesting relationship once they’re together. Leading up to it, the courtship is fun, but once they’re together, it becomes that dynamic that she can’t stand. But that almost seem slightly cynical, that the ones that look like they’re fighting all the time are the healthiest ones.
RM: Maybe not cynical. That may be reality. I think that long relationships are the ones where there’s a big reserve of nourishment in the relationship, and nourishment comes from a lot of places. Sex is certainly one of those places, but intellect and interest in each other is something that is also very important, and when that reserve is shallow, then you know the roots can’t be that deep. I think the relationships in the movie that succeed are these relationships with deep roots in each other’s complete self, and that includes your psyche and your intellect.
Capone: You also do something that almost never happens in romantic comedies or screwball comedies, which is we are always aware of the children in this. We always know where they are. They’re constantly being talked about. And Ethan’s kids, in particular, are just as manipulative as the adults are. Was that important to you?
RM: I’m so glad you say that, because we talked about this when I was developing the script and writing the script. It was always very important to me that the gaze of the children be felt, because as a mother myself, and as somebody who remembers being a child, I know the children, they understand, know, and notice much more than we want to believe. There is that moment when Justine says, “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” She’s assuming there’s a plan all this time, and at a certain point, she realizes that they’re really just walking through the dark with a tiny little flashlight. That’s a hard moment for a child to realize, but everybody comes to it sooner or later. She comes to it maybe a little earlier than some. But everybody realizes their parents are just human beings at some point.
DC: The kids are also the most sane of all of them and the most grounding presence, as the adults are running wild trying to figure it all out. It’s a nice twist.
RM: Yeah. And when Ethan say, “There’s nothing wrong with spending time together as a family,” and it’s just after they’ve gotten a divorce. And the daughter says, “But isn’t that the point of divorce, that you’re not a family?” It’s like she’s trying to work it out. Or Tony at the end, when he says about his son who hasn’t spoken the whole time, and you think he’s not paying any attention, and he says “He’s going to write a book about this one day, and it’s not going to come out good.”
Capone: Isn’t it that horrible feeling when you realize your parents are human and have dreams that weren't fulfilled?
RM: Absolutely. It’s terrible because children, they stay sane partly by believing their parents know what the hell is going on. At a certain point when you’re an adult, you realize “My parents were like me. They were also feeling their way through life and trying to make decisions.” I think it’s such a moment of freedom. It’s an exciting moment for people when they realize they can construct families in so many ways, and coupling is so fluid at this point. There are a lot of positive things about that, but I think one of the things is that children’s lives are also more complicated. This is not a judging film. This is a film that’s very much about observing about where are we now? It’s a message in a bottle that we’re just throwing in a river, and people can open it in 20 years and say “Oh, this was that moment.”
Capone: Are you going to say this movie isn’t going to stand the test of time?
RM: [laughs] Well, I’m hoping that it will be the opposite. The best films for me are films like PAT AND MIKE or ADAM’S RIB or THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, they were very much of their time, but you can totally relate to them. If we’re lucky and we do what I hope we did, we’ve created something that in fact people could enjoy for all time.
Capone: Let’s go back for a second to the creation of this. This is the first of your films that didn’t come from your source materials, either a novel or an original screenplay. There’s a story credit by Karen Rinaldi.
RM: Karen Rinaldi wrote the book which she sent me just a few chapters of, saying “I think this would make a wonderful film. What do you think?” She’s a very close friend of mine. She knew I was looking for something. Damon, being my producing partner, and I both were looking for books, were reading books, books, books. She sent me this thing, and I thought “Oh my god, this is so great.” The emotional geometry of it was all there. It was John, Georgette, Maggie, Lilly, and the switch of, what do you do when you realize your husband is perfect for his ex-wife? I gave it to Damon.
DC: It was witty, the hook was amazing, and it seemed like a perfect pairing with Rebecca’s sensibilities and Rebecca’s personality. It’s one of those things where you start talking about an idea, and you just keep adding and adding and adding to it.
RM: And Rachael Horovitz, who’s the other producer, who we then went to and brought on, she’s another friend of mine too. So there was a lot of discussion that went on as I was writing, which then led to the act of casting the actors.
Capone: So she just sent you that story thread?
RM: Yes. I haven’t actually read the whole thing.
DC: It’s very raw, too. It was very unpolished.
RM: Yes. And she’s since polished it.
Capone: You talked about how it lined up with your sensibilities and what you were looking for at the time, but do you remember some specific things that you hooked into and said “I can build on this”?
RM: Well, definitely the central dilemma. There was no Pickle Man [character], so that whole part of the film wasn’t there, and the friends weren’t there, but the idea that a woman falls in love with a man that’s in an apparently a terrible marriage, where the wife has been villainized, and she meets the woman, realizes that she’s kind of great, and almost gets a girl crush on her because she’s a great woman. And her marriage is on the rocks, but she’s had a baby by now, so she’s thinking “Gosh, he’d be perfect for his ex-wife. How can I make this happen?”
That idea was something that I just thought was so today. I had had conversations with Julianne Moore as a friend, because we’re just friends, and we were just sitting in a coffee shop one day, and she was telling me about a friend of hers who in fact left her marriage for a very big romance with a man who had children and ended up five years later, married to the other man but spent all her time organizing school pick ups and vacations and things like this with these blended families and saying to Julianne, “Maybe I should have just stayed with the first guy.” So I couldn't help but thinking this is so now, this is so us, our moment. How many people that you know that get beyond the age of 45 and somehow have some complication in their lives of a blended family or divorce or stepchildren? And then when I started to come to cast the film, there was such a sense of recognition of people saying “I relate to that,” and us telling a story of our moment in time was very exciting.
Capone: With Ethan’s character being a writer, I feel like when you’re in a household with someone who is creative, that adds something to the family dynamic. You may have even come out of a family like that. But the family very often has to revolve around the schedule or the creative cycle of that person who doesn’t have that 9-to-5 job. I think you actually capture that, because it does feel like no matter where Ethan Hawke is, things are revolving around him.
RM: There is a phrase in the film, “Every relationship has a gardener and a rose. Georgette was definitely the rose.” When he starts out, he’s definitely the gardener, and I think what he wants more than anything is just for a while to be a rose. Maggie makes him into a rose for a while, but there’s no switching back and forth. I think in a good relationship, you get to switch back and forth, and if you’re stuck in one position, you start getting annoyed.
Capone: Greta Gerwig is this person; she’s perfect here. It almost seems inevitable that she would play this part. How did you come to her?
RM: Damon had talked about her, and Cindy [Tolan, casting director] had talked about her too a lot. I had enjoyed her work in FRANCES HA and GREENBERG. But it was when I met her that I just fell in love with her. I just thought “What a wonderful, unique creature. What a great person.” I love the blend of intellect and slight goofiness and innocence about her. With Maggie, she very much created a character. If you met her in real life, you’d realize the way Maggie moves, the way Maggie physically is in the world, her habits of being are not Greta’s at all, but there’s an essence of Greta that comes through, whatever she does.
Capone: We were talking about the character of Guy before. How in god’s name did you find Travis? I’ve seen him in like genre things. I didn’t even recognize him, first of all. Where did you find this Australian beefcake guy to play this sweet, unassuming…
RM: Mathematician? [laughs]
Capone: Exactly.
RM: Well, my husband was watching “Vikings,” and he said, “I think I may have found your Pickle Man.” I mean, literally. And then I told everybody—Cindy, Damon, my friends…
DC: She was talking about it for months. “You’ve got to watch ‘Vikings.’ You’ve got to watch ‘Vikings.’ He’s the pickle guy.” And you would naturally think of a Viking for a pickle man.
RM: [laughs] A pickle man and math major. But what’s great and I think was what he was getting at, which is so true, is that even that in “Vikings,” he has a kind of eeriness about him, something unusual. There’s something in his eyes that you believe this is a person full of thoughts. For Guy, I wanted him to be very slightly on the spectrum, just a little bit off in just the right way for Maggie, because Maggie’s a little bit off. I don’t want to give anything away, but as the person she chooses to be her donor, she would recognize something and think, “I want that. I want a little bit of that in my baby.”
Capone: It was great to meet you. Thank you so much.
RM: It was great to meet you too.
DC: Thank you so much. It was really nice talking to you.
